Riding the Storm
Thoughts on “The Many Challenges of Widgets”
Jeremiah Owyang, Web Strategist & Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, has posted an interesting post on his blog titled ”The Many Challenges of Widgets”. The post lists 17 points, some of which are related to widget developers, others to the issues faced by marketers utilizing widgets.
Here are my thoughts on some of the issues raised by Jeremiah:
- Overcrowding profile page. Have you seen my profile page on Facebook? It’s a mess, and with so much noise, who can compete? With there being thousands of widgets, only a few can survive on my profile page (I know there is tabbed segmentation) but really, how many do we need?
The logic behind this “challenge” is similar to arguing that RSS feeds are problematic because people have too many feeds in their reader. Widgets are a great marketing tool, just like RSS feeds, and both put the end-user in control. If a user chooses to subscribe to 50 RSS feeds, or place 15 widgets on his/hers profile page, so be it.
- Metrics and Analytics Inconsistencies. Hardly anyone is measuring the success of their widgets in the same way, do we measure on install, activity, views, traffic, or clicks? As a result, other than Appsaholic, there’s very few industry ways to measure success.
I agree that standardization is missing, but widgets (if deployed with the right partner) afford an amazing wealth of data that was not available in the past to marketers and advertisers. MuseStorm allows customers to track and analyze distribution (impressions, unique users, geo-location information and more) as well as activity (interaction, click-throughs and more). Many of our customers were able to optimize their widgets based on this deep data to achieve great results. Like all new technologies and solutions there are inconsistencies between vendors, but these should not prevent savvy marketers from engaging now to gain an edge.
- Spammy. Sadly, I learned from a panel I managed that some of the most successful apps were the one that leaned on the social graph, no not the one that we all dream about, but in the context of email spam. Many containers are clamping down on this, as it’s best to preserve the user experience, but this could continue to be an issue.
While there are many “spammy” applications out there, most competent widget/application providers will stir marketers away from behavior like the one described above. At MuseStorm, our client services team has tons of experience and has been helping customers achieve success the right way. Choose the right partner.
- Disposable and low value. Rodney Rumford first mentioned this term to me, he was describing that many widgets are simply not used more than once. These glamor widgets provide one time entertainment, or are used once and never reused –except for removing from ones profile page.
This is a great point that Jeremiah is raising. Many marketers are not aware of the work that has to go into keeping a widget fresh and engaging long term. Many widget providers don’t bother talking about this challenge and utilize a “hit and run” strategy - sell and forget. At MuseStorm, we have the methodology and the tools to help marketers succeed over time.
- Hard to build successfully. Specialized skill set are common among the developers, most traditional interactive firms, and most companies don’t have the skills or experience to create a widget. It’s a different game with a different mindset, the same strategies often don’t apply.
Jeremiah really nailed it with this one! a common scenario for a marketer is to approach end-users across a variety of distribution channels, from facebook to MySpace to startpages. Each of these requires a different skill set and assembling multiple development teams is expensive and slow. At MuseStorm, our production studio allows non-technical personnel to create almost any type of social applications and widgets, easily. Working with MuseStorm makes this a non-issue.
- Multiple APIs strain developers. Most platforms or containers are offering their own API, although most are touting they are OpenSocial compliant (as I write this, OpenSocial is
not public, it is but in beta but should be soon) yet we’ve got to wonder is it too late for there to be a common industry API if it’s already fragmented?...
Again, I could not agree more. The frequent changes of the underlying mechanisms of social networks, coupled with the pace of innovation and new entrants, make it even more important to select your widget platform partner wisely.
- Ever changing platform APIs requires attentive team. When I hosted the widget roundtable, it became very clear that the APIs on platforms are quickly changing, and sometimes without notice. For the agile developer company, they’ll be able to quickly morph with their full time resources, but for the Interactive Firm or corporate web team, they’ll likely be too slow.
See my comments on the previous point. Bingo.
- Performance Issues. Pravda (via comments) suggests that some widgets have poor performance, and thereby causes a disrupted experience. Since widgets are hosted on third party servers, some laggards can hinder the rest of the social network experience, he states: “This is because they require additional HTTP request, and in some cases, this request delays the rest of the page. This is the reason that I am not using Meebo widget in my blog”.
Again, I think Jeremiah is wrong here, pretty much as with the first point about over crowding. Performance issues are not a general “widget” issue, they are an issue of bad implementation and thus an issue of selecting the wrong partner. Like everything else online, make sure you select the right solution to make your users’ experience the best it can be.
Bottom Line
Thanks Jeremiah, for raising the issues. MuseStorm is here for those marketers who would like a solution that takes care of all these challenges, professionally and from the ground up.
Promo Magazine’s Widget Article
Brian Quinton at Promo Magazine has written a great article about widgets and widget marketing.
The article discusses the fundamentals of widgets and Ori Soen, MuseStorm's CEO is interviewed.
Keeping Widgets Hot and Interactive
Recently we had a kind of challenge - a major studio used the MuseStorm platform as a key part of a new, hot record release. They knew response would be huge but the challenge was to capture that audience and engage them for days, if not weeks or months. More than that, they wanted fans to spread the word...and the proverbial widget.
Well things started off as planned. A few weeks before the record release the widget had stable hits and the very high interactivity that typifies a devoted and sizeable user base. Not huge numbers but good.
Then the album was released....and widget use skyrocketed into the hundreds of thousands of visitors. That was the good news. But also as expected (but not hoped), interactivity and interest inevitably started to decrease, as less devoted fans started accessing the widget and began to lose interest.
It was time to act!
Here are some techniques we used to “capture and hold” this new audience:
- Periodically Update Widget “Programming””Tell me what I don’t already know” you say. Well, amazingly, this basic precept of holding an audience is often ignored: Keep content fresh. Do it early and often and plan for the content weeks in advance. We often tell clients to think of themselves as a television channel: You entertain and you capture your audience. Don’t entertain, and you will get canceled. The perceived problem is that keeping content fresh often requires costly updates. (Here comes the shameless pitch) Not so with MuseStorm. Adding fresh content can be done on the fly and by just about anyone. Look ma! No programming!
- Announce!. Ok. Don’t get obnoxious about it, but announcing information that you know would be interesting to your audience is a good thing. In our case there was a new album released, a concert tour, a contest, etc… and you can see how tempting it is to announce too often. Use your judgment, do it right, and you will give your audience a portable way to keep close to their adored star. (Of course, MuseStorm has a handy and easy way to create announcements that show up prominently on all distributed widgets.)
- Link In and Link Out. Got a web site? Doing a sweepstakes? Linking in and linking out to the widget creates more cross pollination than a rabid killer bee hive. Here we linked into a sweepstakes and then embedded and promoted the widget from the main site. The result? More traffic in both media and increased virality.
- Use Video Strategically. Updating general content is one thing. But updating with video deserves special attention; it is that compelling and effective. Some of our customers use video to answer fan questions, create special multi-media announcements and more. This particular customer initially placed their artist’s video up front. Later they realized they could leverage it to pull users farther into the widget, increasing interactivity.
So what were the results?
Using just a few of these techniques we were able to increase user interactivity by over 13 percent in a single day and maintain audience engagement for weeks. That’s a huge payoff for a few minutes work.
Impressions Vs. Reality
Recently we had an animated brainstorming/feedback session with one of our customers. After a discussion on features (they are on their way!), the conversation turned to a talk about “Impressions VS. Reality” We thought we should share.
Here is the general issue: Traditional media concentrates on impressions, defined as how many eyeballs might have actually seen a specific piece of content (an ad, banner...you get the idea).
Impressions are ok if they are the only thing you’ve got. But many times, users don’t notice content on a webpage, or content gets loaded outside the users view, and these things still count as impressions.
Without an alternative, impressions are the best you can do...but is a very inaccurate best when your business objective is to understand (and capitalize on) engagement. In the widget “industry” today, the focus has been on meeting the status quo: impressions are what people understand...and so that’s what vendors delivered.
We’re taking a different track, and this customer noticed. Viewing MuseStorm’s Total Analytics for the first time, the customer realized that they could gain much deeper insight into user engagement and commitment; insight they could use to better value their content and success. We identified several analyses that, taken alone, just look like stats. But when interpreted from a business perspective, provided a new dimension of user commitment and business value:
- Widget Impressions. Yes. Still need them. But now they actually indicate how many times the content has actually been loaded, not seen. Maybe we should change their name to “deliveries”
- Widget Interactivity. This goes beyond click-through. Widget Interactivity can show how devoted the user is to content. Certain of interactivity flows are especially interesting. For example: For those users that stop a video, do they restart it and watch it completely? Similarly, when audio or video are muted, is it unmuted? Was the video watched more than once by the same user? These behaviors are a clearer measure of how interested the user is in the content.
- Widget Stickiness. Stale or uninteresting widgets get dumped pretty quickly. Widget stickiness measures how long widgets live on web pages. Understanding when a widget is removed or becomes inactive can act as an alarm to bolster content and maintain widget freshness.
- Widget Revenue. How much revenue (ad, sales) can be directly attributed to the widget.
The MuseStorm platform provides a wealth of analytics data on both engagement and distribution. It is the only service that actually provides real engagement metrics (not just clicks) and we constantly work to add more insights and views. Check it out by signing up here.
MuseStorm Now Lets You Create Complete Facebook Apps
Yesterday we announced the availability of ground-breaking functionality: we now allow users of the MuseStorm Content Engagement Platform to create complete Facebook applications and to dynamically re-purpose Flash-based widgets into Facebook applications (the full press release is here).
While all other solutions/platforms out there simply provide a way to stick a Flash widget on a Facebook page, allowing no access to the social graph and social networking APIs, MuseStorm actually lets you create real, native FBML applications on the fly, in minutes.
Here's a glimpse of our Facebook Application Generator (click images to enlarge):
Create Facebook applications from scratch or re-purpose Flash based widgets
MuseStorm automatically converts Flash functionality into FBML
Dedicated Facebook functionality allows you to create applications in minutes
Total Analytics give you engagement and distribution metrics
Oh, and by the way, any Flash widget you create using our platform can now run on the desktop as a stand-alone executable (no need to download an engine).
The new functionality will be available to customers Monday Dec 9th.
Announcing Yahoo! Widgets Support
Today we are announcing support for Yahoo! Widgets
Yahoo! has just released version 4.5 of their popular widget engine (originally called Konfabulator) and one of their greatest improvements is the ability to run HTML and Flash, which means web widgets created on the MuseStorm platform can run on desktops running the Yahoo! Widget engine.
As always, MuseStorm is committed to supporting all widget formats and distribution channels that are relevant for our customers, and this latest announcement underscores our commitment.
Next week, at the Widgety Goodness conference in the UK, we will be making another very exciting announcement (actually, more then one...), so stay tuned!
CBS Mobile Launches Widget To Promote New Animated Series
CBS Mobile has launched a widget to promote their new mobile animated series: Danny Bonaduce Life Coach. The widget utilizes the MuseStorm Content Engagement Platform, is very interactive and multi-dimensional.
The show is really funny (check out the episode where Danny gives Britney Spears advice) and the widget follows suit. You can see the widget here, and learn more about Danny Bonaduce here.
Or check out his crazy “Bonaduce Merchandise” (?) website. Funny.
MuseStorm To Sponsor Widgety Goodness Conference
We are glad to announce that MuseStorm will be sponsoring the first European Widget conference, Widgety Goodness in the UK in December. MuseStorm CEO, Ori Soen, will be speaking at the event and will share real case studies and success stories with the audience. MuseStorm will also be making an exciting announcement during the conference, so don’t miss it!
When
Thursday December 6th 2007 * Corn Exchange, Brighton
Title
Widgets, gadgets, platforms, OpenSocial and the social graph
Description
Widgety Goodness will look at one of the key emerging online trends: the widgetization of content for social networks. Widgets offer huge potential as carriers of marketing, brand and advertising messages into social networks. Successful widgets are viral in nature can distribute your content or marketing message across the internet. This one day conference will inform and inspire you, giving you a thorough understanding of the opportunities in the widgetsphere and how to leverage them.
Our aim is to answer four questions:
- what role do widgets play in online strategy
- what tools are available for the development and distribution of widgets
- what destinations do widgets go to and how do I get them there
- how do I track and analyse widgets once they have left home
Speakers
Our speakers, from top level agency, widget tool and social network companies are at the leading edge of working with this dynamic space. This one day conference is aimed at professionals in the marketing, brand, media and advertising industries. It will pose and attempt to answer some of the key questions around widgets and offer you the opportunity to meet and network with many of your peers engaging with this space.
Who Should Attend
Marketing, Advertising & Communications professionals
Directors & Heads of E-Commerce/Interactive Marketing
Marketing & New Media managers
Strategists/Analysts/Consultants (working in the online space)
Startup Founders & Entrepreneurs (with widget tools or widget based strategies)
Conference Host
Ivan Pope , founder of Snipperoo, widget blogger and internet visionary.
Def Jam Records launches MuseStorm widget to promote new album
Def Jam Records and Universal Music have launched a widget for singer-songwriter The Dream using the MuseStorm Content Engagement Platform.
You can read more about it and see the live widget here.
The Dream’s MySpace page is here.
MuseStorm Update
It’s been a long time since we last updated the blog, with so many developments that it’s hard to keep track.
Here are some major milestones from the last few months:
- In June we completed a round of financing from Elron
- In September we launched the most advanced widget syndication solution anywhere, the MuseStorm Content Engagement Platform, at the DEMOfall 2007 conference. You can read more about the platform here.
- At the beginning of November we were one of a small number of companies that worked with Google on the Google OpenSocial launch, working with Universal Music to create an OpenSocial application for Jimi Hendrix. You can see it in action here.
We are about to announce a number of very exciting announcements in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!
P.S. we plan to update the blog regularly from now on